Our City magazine

Thank you for your request for Information made under the Freedom of Information Act.

Your request will now be dealt with and a response will be sent within 20 working days, starting from the next working day after your request is received.

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Mr Woods

Many thanks for your FoI Act enquiry dated May 3rd 2009 which has been
forwarded to me to respond to.

The budget for the council's Our City Magazine for residents for
2009/10 is as follows:-

Printing: £74,022
Distribution: £70,176
Design: £20,874
Photography: £5,244
Staffing (1 post including salary of up to £30,456 plus all employer's
insurances, overheads and costs): £45,705
Total: £216,021

The council plans to produce six editions of Our City in 2009/10, each
delivered to 184,000 households with a further 3,500 copies of each
issue for distribution to the public through council buildings and
libraries, local groups and organisations - bringing the total print run
per annum to 1,125,000 copies.

Therefore the costs per edition and per copy are as follows:

PER EDITION

Printing: £12,337
Distribution: £11,696
Design: £3,479
Photography: £874
Staffing, inc all overheads: £7,617.50
Total cost per edition: £36,003

PER PRINTED COPY (figures rounded up or down to the nearest halfpence,
to one decimal place)

Printing: 6.5p
Distribution: 6.0p
Design: 2.0p
Photography: 0.5p
Staffing, inc all overheads: 4.0p
Total cost per printed copy: approx 19p.

This information has never been withheld and has always been made
openly available by my office to anyone requiring it. I trust that
should you publish this information online or elsewhere, you do not
present it as being something that has been previously been kept secret
in some way or that has only been made available because of the
requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. To do so would be both
misleading and inaccurate.

Like other local authorities up and down the country, the council
believes it has a duty to keep residents informed on a regular basis and
sees the expenditure outlined above as a legitimate and value-for-money
way of fulfilling that obligation. Response to our Citizens Panel
surveys of over 2,000 residents show that Our City is the most popular
source of local information about the city council and is welcomed by
the majority of local residents. The magazine complements other forms of
communication including the council's website and its regular news
service for local media.

This response should answer your request in full, however if you are
not satisfied with this response or wish to lodge an appeal against any
exemptions that may have been applied, you can do so by writing to the
Data Protection Officer at Bristol City Council Legal Services, The
Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS99 7PH or [Bristol City Council request email].
Details of the complaints procedure can be found at
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/complaints.

If, after you have exhausted the council’s complaints procedure, you
are still not satisfied with the response you have received you have the
right to complain to the Information Commissioner, details of your right
to complain can be found at http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx

Simon Caplan
Head of Corporate Communications
Bristol City Council

Copyright notice
The provision of information by Bristol City Council under this scheme
does not imply a right to reproduce or commercially exploit such
information without the Council's express prior written permission.

Reproduction or commercial exploitation of materials supplied under
this scheme without the express permission of Bristol City Council may
be an infringement of copyright.

The Council is unable to grant permission to reproduce or re-use any
material accessed through this scheme that is the property of third
parties. Permission to reproduce or re-use such material must be
obtained from the copyright holders.

______________________________________________________________________
'Do it online' with our growing range of online services - http://www.bristol.gov.uk/services

Sign-up for our email bulletin giving news, have-your-say and event information at: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/newsdirect

View webcasts of Council meetings at http://www.bristol.gov.uk/webcast